Reference
Paint sheen chart
Colour is the decision people agonise over. Sheen is the one that decides whether the wall can be wiped, whether every bump in the plaster shows, and whether a scuff can be touched up in two years without repainting the whole room. It is a durability setting, not a style setting — and it moves in one direction only.
Paint sheen chart, flat to high gloss
Sheen is measured as gloss units on a meter held at 60° to the surface. The bands overlap between manufacturers and the names are not standardised — one brand's matte is another's eggshell — so buy on the gloss figure and the description, never on the word alone.
| Sheen | Gloss at 60° | Scrubbing | Hides flaws | Where it belongs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flat / matte | 0–5 | Poor | Best of any | Ceilings, low-traffic rooms, walls that have been patched |
| Washable matte | 5–10 | Fair | Very good | Living rooms and bedrooms where the plaster is not perfect |
| Eggshell | 10–25 | Good | Good | The default for walls in most of the house |
| Satin | 25–35 | Very good | Fair | Kitchens, bathrooms, hallways, children's rooms |
| Semi-gloss | 35–70 | Excellent | Poor | Trim, doors, cabinets, laundry and wet rooms |
| High gloss | 70+ | Excellent | None — magnifies | Front doors, cabinetry, furniture, deliberate accents |
Read the table as a single trade. Every step up the sheen ladder buys washability and gives away forgiveness, in the same movement and in the same proportion. There is no finish that is both tough and flattering, and every argument about sheen is really an argument about which of the two the room needs more.
Eggshell vs satin paint
These two sit next to each other on the ladder, which is exactly why the choice is hard. Satin carries roughly a third more gloss than eggshell. It wipes cleaner, stands up to a scrubbing sponge, and shrugs off the grease that settles on a kitchen wall. Eggshell has a soft, low lustre that reads almost flat on the wall and hides a surface that is not quite true.
The deciding factor is rarely durability, because both are durable enough for a wall. It is touch-up. A scuff on eggshell can be spot-painted with a brush and the repair disappears. The same repair in satin catches the light at a different angle from the wall around it and stays visible until the whole surface is recoated. On a rented flat, a hallway with children, or any wall that will take knocks for years, that difference costs more than the extra scrubbing gains.
Use eggshell on walls in bedrooms, living rooms, dining rooms and offices — anywhere the wall is looked at more than it is touched. Use satin where the wall gets wiped: kitchens, bathrooms, children's rooms, mudrooms and the lower half of a busy stairway.
Flat vs eggshell, and eggshell vs semi-gloss
Flat vs eggshell is a question about the wall, not the room. Flat scatters light in every direction, so a patched repair, a wavy old plaster wall or a drywall seam that was finished in a hurry simply stops being visible. Nothing else does that. What it cannot do is survive cleaning: wiping a traditional flat paint burnishes the spot you wiped and leaves a shiny patch. Washable matte closes most of that gap and is worth the extra few dollars a gallon on any wall below eye level.
Eggshell vs semi-gloss is not really a comparison, because they are for different parts of the room. Semi-gloss belongs on trim, doors and cabinets: it is hard, it takes a wipe with a cloth, and the step up in sheen is what separates the woodwork visually from the wall behind it. On a full wall it is punishing — it turns every nail pop, every roller lap and every flaw in the substrate into a highlight. The one exception is a small wet room with no natural light, where the extra moisture resistance earns the trade.
The convention that resolves most of these arguments at once: trim is painted one or two steps glossier than the wall beside it. Eggshell walls take semi-gloss trim. Flat walls take satin or semi-gloss trim. The contrast is what makes the woodwork look deliberate rather than unfinished.
What sheen to use in each room
| Room | Walls | Trim and doors | Ceiling | The reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bedroom, living room | Eggshell | Semi-gloss | Flat | Looked at, not touched — forgiveness wins |
| Hallway, stairs | Eggshell or satin | Semi-gloss | Flat | Shoulders and bags hit these walls daily |
| Kitchen | Satin | Semi-gloss | Flat or satin | Grease wipes off a satin wall and not a flat one |
| Bathroom | Satin | Semi-gloss | Satin, mildew-resistant | Moisture needs a tight film everywhere |
| Children's room | Satin | Semi-gloss | Flat | Everything on these walls comes off with a sponge |
| Laundry, mudroom | Satin | Semi-gloss | Flat | Damp and traffic in the same small space |
| Basement, garage | Satin | Semi-gloss | Flat | Damp air; satin resists it and cleans down |
| Any ceiling | — | — | Flat | Sheen overhead shows every lap mark and joint |
The ceiling row never changes, and it is the one people are most tempted to break. A ceiling is lit from below at a raking angle by every lamp in the room, which is the exact condition that reveals sheen. Flat is not a compromise up there — it is the only finish that hides the joints between boards. The ceiling paint calculator works in the coverage rate of ceiling paint specifically, which is lower than wall paint because it is formulated to be thick and slow-drying enough not to leave lap marks.
What sheen does to the amount you buy
Very little, directly. Spread rate is set by the surface underneath far more than by the finish on top — a gallon covers roughly the same area in eggshell as in satin. Where sheen does change the order is in coats. A higher-sheen paint shows its own application, so a patchy second coat that would vanish in flat is obvious in semi-gloss, and the fix is a full third coat rather than a touch-up.
Two related rules are worth the paragraph. Changing sheen on the same colour changes how that colour reads — a glossier finish reflects more light and looks lighter and less saturated, so a swatch approved in matte can be rejected on the wall in satin. And a sheen change always needs full coverage: painting satin over flat, or any finish over a glossy one, will telegraph the boundary unless the new finish goes wall to wall.
For the quantity itself, paint coverage per gallon has the spread rate for each surface, and the paint calculator turns a room's measurements into gallons with the coats and the openings taken off.
Work out gallons for your room →